Big Love

Reminiscent of Nicolas Roeg's Bad Timing (1980), this sexually explicit art movie jumps back and forth between two story lines, one tracing the obsessive affair between a teenage music student (Aleksandra Hamkalo) and a biochemist (Antoni Pawlicki) some ten years her senior, and the other chronicling the police investigation that ensues after the man has murdered the girl. Writer-director Barbara Bialowas seems more concerned with style than substance: her movie is full of pretentious flourishes (music-video numbers, time-lapse photography, oversaturated color) that distract from the characterization. This is never dull, however, and the two leads deliver highly charged performances. In Polish with subtitles.
ByBen Sachs